The Dallas Arboretum is seeking changes to its Planned Development District, most of which have to do with parking and traffic.
The changes are on the April 21 Plan Commission agenda. And a meeting for neighbors to ask questions of arboretum president Mary Brinegar is 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 20 at the Camp House in the arboretum.
“We are trying to do some things we think will ease traffic congestion and provide better safety for the neighborhood,” Brinegar says.
Here are some of the proposed changes:
First, let’s talk about alcohol sales. The arboretum doesn’t have a liquor license. It contracts with food service providers that have liquor licenses. That’s how the arboretum can allow concert-goers to bring in bottles of wine with their picnics for Cool Thursdays and similar events. And that won’t change. I repeat: You can still bring your bottle of wine to arboretum concerts.
But parts of the arboretum fall into the old “dry” part of Dallas, so before the wet-dry election in November, alcohol sales were only permitted in certain areas. The change requested would allow arboretum restaurant vendors selling alcohol anywhere on the property, in compliance with the new ordinance. Guests still will not be allowed to carry drinks from the arboretum’s restaurants into the gardens.
Now let’s get into the traffic and parking changes.
The arboretum owns a treed lot across Garland Road, which used to house a trailer park and is known as the Booziotis lot. The PD change request calls for a parking lot there, and in the future, a multilevel parking garage. The arboretum also wants to be able to build a sky bridge or tunnel across Garland Road sometime in the future so that people can get to and from that parking lot or garage.
They want to add additional parking spaces, using environmentally sensitive permeable materials, in an area on the south end of the property that is now dirt. People park there already, but they will become actual parking spaces if the change is approved.
The arboretum is asking for additional vehicular entrances, including an emergency entrance on Garland and an emergency exit on Lawther, a new public entrance on Garland Road that would serve the Rory Meyers Children’s Adventure Garden, which is under construction.
They also want a “specialty entrance for a limited number of guests” on Gaston Parkway, on the northeast corner of the arboretum.
The arboretum also wants to place as many as five message signs on Garland Road, directing drivers to parking options. They will be informational only — so no promotions or advertising — and not used after 10 p.m. The change request states they will “compliment the existing landscape, be sensibly scaled” and fall within city and Garland Road Vision standards.
